Buzz, Balls & Hype : The Man in Black and White

Tuesday + Jason Pinter = Between the Covers

The Hard Way

Well I’m back. Didja miss me? You didn’t? You were too busy celebrating the 4^th of July, barbecuing delicious meats and veggies and sipping margaritas on the beach? Are you trying to say that’s more exciting than my column? Pfft. Who needs you.

Anyway…

In case you haven’t read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal recently (or, in that matter, visited a bookstore in 20 years), you know about this phenomenon called “The Paperback Original.” Paperback originals, once looked down on with disdain as “B list rack fillers,” are now fully embraced by both the publishing industry and booksellers alike. More often than ever, publishers are introducing debut authors in paperback in the hopes of offering their books to readers at lower cost, with higher print runs than a debut hardcover, hence the chance to build a larger readership faster. Of course, the eventual hope is to grow the author to become a hardcover staple, and the paperback is generally a means to that end.

But let’s look at the other side. There are many reasons why authors (not to mention agents) prefer to begin their careers in hardcover. Firstly, there’s more money in hardcover. Publishers make more per book, so they can afford to pay authors more money per book. Secondly, reviewers tend to take hardcovers more seriously and give them more attention. More reviews mean more ink means more exposure means more sales. Thirdly, the sensation of the book itself. Is there a better feeling than holding that hardback in your hands? It feels like a work of art, right? Right? Damn right.

The great P.J Parrish wrote on Murderati about her (their?) career as a paperback writer. How their books have progressively gotten bigger, with higher print runs and attention, even hitting the New York Times bestseller list. Overall I thought it was a terrific post. But it hit a foul note on one thing. P.J. talks about how she (they?) would prefer to go out as a paperback original, with several hundred thousand copies, than as an overprinted hardcover with 40,000 or 50,000. Makes sense, right? Right? Wrong.

See, another good thing about hardcovers is that the better they perform in that format, the more potential they have in paperback. The major bestselling authors who sell hundreds of thousands of copies in hardcover also sell in the millions in paperback. Yes, you read that right, millions. The more copies an author sells in hardcover, the more copies they sell in paperback. And bestselling hardcover authors always sell more of their paperbacks than bestselling original paperback authors.

But there are mitigating factors. Perhaps the most important barometer of every book is not net sales, not royalties earned, but a mysterious term called “Sell through.” What is sell through? Pretty simple. It’s the number of books sold divided by the number of books shipped. So if book X ships 30,000 copies and sells 15,000 of them, Book X has a sell through of 50%. It’s a simple equation that gives the publisher an idea of just how desirable the book was to readers. A lower sell through means there was more supply, less demend. A higher sell through means more demand, less supply, and the publisher had to go back for multiple printings (nothing publishers love more than multiple printings).

When a book is published, there’s a certain expectation as to what the sell through will be. For a hardcover, they expect approximately 65%. For a trade paperback, around 70%. For a mass market paperback, around 50%-60%. On her blog, P.J. says that a publisher debuting an author in hardcover is setting the author up for failure. Not necessarily true…but let’s just say that if the first book doesn’t work, the author’s going to have a mighty hard time recovering.

If a debut hardcover author has a first printing of 25,000 copies, and sells 12,500 of those for a 50% sell through, that’s considered below expectations. It means the paperback will go out with fewer copies, and their next hardcover will likely go out with 18,000 or even 15,000 copies. And if that sell through is low…look out below. Generally paperback authors do ship more copies than debut hardcovers, usually between 50,000-250,000 depending on the size of the push from their publisher. (most publishers have one or two hardcover “make” debuts a year, where they pull out all marketing and publicity stops and have first printings in the 80,000-100,000 range, sometimes higher. If it works—THE RULE OF FOUR, THE WIDOW OF THE SOUTH—the sky’s the limit). Paperback authors generally take a little longer to build up their audiences, taking 3, or 5, or 10 books before their publisher is confident to move them to hardcover. But when they do, their career is on infinitely better footing than a debut hardcoveralist. Look at authors like Lisa Jackson and Sherrilyn Kenyon. Both of them recently published their very first hardcover after many successful paperback originals. And both hardcovers debuted in the top 5 on the New York Times bestseller list. And their paperback editions will likely go out in higher numbers than their paperback originals. So it’s not “50,000 hardcovers versus 250,000 paperbacks,” it’s “50,000 hardcovers plus 250,000 paperbacks versus 250,000 paperbacks.”

So in the end, what I’ve found is that it’s easier to break an author out in hardcover, but easier to grow a career in paperback. Some of the bestselling and most respected authors of our generation began publishing paperback originals. Robert Crais. Lisa Scottoline. Jhumpa Lahiri. Laura Lippman. Harlan Coben. Many of the most promising authors of the future began their careers or currently publish in paperback. Allison Brennan. Charlie Huston. Naomi Novik. A.J. Hartley. Richard Doetsch. Our very own M.J. Rose. (She had three hardcovers and a TB original before moving to PB - but the previous novels were in another genre.) They brought luster to a category formerly shunned by elitists, showing that maintaining a longterm career benefits from years of building your audience.

Oh yeah, my debut novel is being published in paperback. And I’m damn happy about it. But a hardcover in a few years will still feel pretty darn nice…

Jason Pinter

Author of THE MARK

Coming July, 2007 from MIRA books

Buzz, Balls & Hype

Because there are over 750,000 self-pubbed and 250,000 books published a year and they won't all get reviews in the NYTBR. Authored by M.J. Rose

July 11, 2006

The Man in Black and White

12 Comments

M.J. Rose

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments